Tag Archive for app

Awesome World Atlas iPad App

I found this fantastic iPad app the other day that I suspect is meant to be for educatins children, but I (clearly a young at heart adult) am absolutely hooked!

It’s called the Barefoot World Atlas, and is basically an interactive way to view all the different countries and areas in the world.

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When the app starts, you see a globe that zooms in and out with the usual simple pinch gestures you’re already used to in your iPad and iPhone.

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It’s a gorgeous visual rendition of terrain, land size, but also has cute little graphics of what the particular country you’re looking at is famous for.

Tapping on a country’s name will bring up a list of its vital stats for your perusal.

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You can also tap on the cute pictures – tapping on the African elephant told me all about elephants native to Africa and their endangerment species status. Tapping on the rugby player told me that rugby is Africa’s national spot! Things I never knew!

You can also view a straight up list of countries, and tap on its name to be taken straight there on the map.

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OR you can also view a list of featured items (or what I call the list of cute pictures).

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All in all, I think it’s a basic app that does what it says well. It provides good information such as demographics, flags, land size and capital cities, is a fun and colorful way to view what can otherwise be pretty dry information, and is a good educational tool for kids or geographically challenged adults like me to have a bit of fun whilst learning more about the world we live in.

Cost – $8.49

Update your iPad/iPhone apps for iOS5

apple ipad app store icon

Hello my lovelies,

Well I woke up in a flurry of excitement this morning because it is iOS5 day, meaning tonight or tomorrow, you’ll be updating your iPads/iPhones to have the latest software update by Apple, also giving you access to a bunch of cool, new features.

In preparation and anticipation, I’m updating all my apps today because many app developers are adding on iOS5 functionality to keep up with Apple’s software update. Many of my students aren’t aware of how to do this, so I’ve outlined this quickly here.

(Just a note – this App Update process is a useful thing to do every few weeks with or without Apple software updates happening – so your apps can continue to function well and make sure you have the latest version. App updates are free and easy to do – and take all of 5 minutes!)

1. Make sure you are connected to WI-FI (so your app updates download smoothly and faster).

2. Tap on your App store icon on your home screen. You can see from the picture of my App store icon below, that there are 19 updates available (by the red number in the corner).

apple ipad app store icon

3. Once the App Store opens, in the bottom right hand corner, tap on Updates.

4. A list of available updates will show. You can see what the updates are for – you’ll see in this case many of them are to provide iOS5 compatibility but they can also be for bug fixes, upgrades, or more.

apple ipad app store update screen

Tap on UPDATES in the bottom right hand corner, then UPDATE ALL in the top right hand corner.

5. Tap on Update All in the top right hand corner of the screen.

6. Enter your iTunes password.

enter your itunes password for app updates

enter your password, and tap OK.

7. My iPad then asked me to accept the new iTunes store terms and conditions, so I went ahead and did that. (You may not have to do it, but I find it’s pretty consistent with most people’s iPads from time to time).

itunes terms and conditions - accept screen

Press OK!

itunes terms and conditions

scroll down...

accepting itunes terms and conditions on ipad

Tap on AGREE

agreeing to itunes t&c on ipad

Tap on AGREE again

itunes terms and conditions DONE

Tap on DONE

8. Then I had to tap on Update All again, and enter my iTunes password again.

9. Watch as your apps update.

watch your apps update on ipad

AND YOU’RE DONE! Now all your apps are ready for your iOS5 update tomorrow.

Don’t forget to also update your iTunes – my next post is about just that.

Yours in learning and laughter,

Sharon

iphone app: hoyts

On Saturday night, on a whim, S and I decided to go watch a movie. We were, for various reasons, trying to kill time out in the Eastern suburbs, which we weren’t so familiar with, and were tossing up between having dinner somewhere or watching a movie, or going to a bar for a drink.

As S drove around in the general direction of civilisation (we hoped), I googled “Eastland cinema”, and the Hoyts iPhone app popped up.

Hmm, I thought. Intriguing.

And promptly, of course, went to the App Store and downloaded it.

And was duly impressed.

Truly.

hoyts iphone app

The Hoyts iPhone App delivered quite the user experience – in 3 minutes flat, I worked out how to use it, picked our movie, and selected our tickets. It’s user-interface is wonderfully simple and slick looking, and I love that it’s extremely fast to load each page.

hoyts iphone app

simple, pretty interface

You can search by Movies or Cinema, and once you do, buying a ticket is just about 2 taps away. You can choose your seat easily, and that’s that.

Then, you simply enter your credit card details, and the receipt is stored in your “Purchases” section. You don’t need to have an account, register, or sign in (though if you have a Hoyts account, you can use it on this app too), which means a hassle-free transaction.

I think this was one of the major selling points for me – if you give your customers an easy, clear path to purchasing, chances are, they will buy more easily and happily and impulsively. Which is kind of what happened to us. I went from “maybe we should watch a movie” to “I bought tickets!” before S had even left the next set of traffic lights.

Within seconds, the barcode was sent to me and all I had to do when we rocked up at Eastland Hoyts was display my purchase barcode to the nice lady at the counter. She scanned it, and BOOM, we were in.

It actually was harder and took longer to find the right carpark to park in at Eastland.

So there you go. If you’re a movie aficionado, you need this app – it has definitely endeared me to Hoyts, and it certainly helped that their La Premiere experience was pretty damn good too. Plus, the app is free. What more do you need in life? :)